Upside Down

by John Ramsey Miller

  “I knew he was a decorated vet. I'll keep those VIPs in mind. You want to ‘red ball' this one?”

  “Not just yet. It's early. If you don't have it in the bag by Monday, we'll take another look. I'm just giving you a heads-up that there are going to be some people watching over your shoulder. I assured them both that you will get it cleared fast. Keep accurate records . . . just in case. We need to cover our asses on this one.”

  “I'll give it my undivided attention.”

  Suggs started away, then turned back. “I want you to know that despite our not seeing eye-to-eye on the Porter thing, I have absolute confidence in your ability. Bond will be back on Monday”—Suggs actually managed one of his pained smiles, which looked to Manseur like something a funeral home director would wear when a grieving family opted for the cheapest casket available—“but I expect you'll have this solved by then.”

  Manseur nodded impassively at his boss. “Sure looks like you were on the money on the Porter/Lee. All that evidence they found in that house. More than you'd expect to find.”

  “Well, she's an amateur, and Tinnerino and Doyle are damn good cops who use old-fashioned police work. Girls that age aren't all like your daughters. The Porter gal is the sort of misfit other kids pick on—classic type to shoot things up. She was probably on her way to the school to even some scores and her Mom got in the way.”

  “Nothing like good old-fashioned police work.” Like picking a suspect out, then beating a confession out of him.

  “Tinnerino and Doyle are closing in on her,” Suggs said. “Just a matter of time.”

  An alligator's lifetime, unless Faith Ann Porter climbs in through their open car window while they're asleep. Captain Suggs was the only thing that stood between Tinnerino and Doyle and dismissal from the squad for any number of just-cause reasons. The single positive consequence of the pair's laziness lay in the fact that, since they spent as little time around the office as possible, the productive detectives weren't constantly exposed to Suggs's rewarding their obvious incompetence with his praise and protection.

  “Well, carry on,” Suggs said.

  “I am going to solve this one before Bond gets back,” Manseur told Suggs's backside. Despite the lack of sleep he'd suffered lately, Manseur felt energized. He wondered if Deputy U.S. Marshal Massey was in town yet. With luck he would talk to Massey before Suggs did.

  As Manseur watched the captain make his way back to his office, he felt a sensation of excited anticipation very like the one he'd had as a schoolboy waiting patiently for his teacher to open her desk drawer and find the grass snake he'd hidden there.

  34

  Winter sat on his bed and mulled over what USMS Director Richard Shapiro had just told him on the telephone.

  He had expected more from Shapiro. Modesty aside, Winter had single-handedly saved the USMS witness protection program from disgrace. His personal investigation had brought down a rogue CIA-affiliated network of assassins—ex military cutouts, men with fictionalized identities. He and Hank had both been shot up during the operation. So, yes, Winter believed his director owed him and Hank a great deal more than a brushoff.

  In the three minutes their conversation had lasted, the director expressed his sympathy over Hank and Millie's “unfortunate accident.” He did agree that the appearance of a connection between the death of Hank's sister-in-law and the timing of the hit-and-run was troubling. But when Winter pressed him for help, Shapiro said that after the events of the year before, the attorney general had made it clear that all federal investigations in the future would be conducted by the agencies. The AG had reminded Shapiro that the U.S. Marshals Service was not an investigative branch of the Justice Department, and, no matter what the circumstances were, the USMS would never be endowed with the powers of investigation that the FBI, CIA, DEA, and the ATF had. Shapiro told Winter to let the local police do their job. If there was any investigating to be done, the FBI would handle it.

  In any case, Shapiro went on, hit-and-runs were not federal crimes unless they involved federal property or a federal agent struck down because he was a federal agent. Since Hank was not a marshal at the time of the event, and the event was not as a result of his official work, the FBI wouldn't become involved. He did say that the FBI director and the attorney general were both aware of the accident and would certainly monitor the investigation. Lastly, he told Winter that he had picked Winter's replacement. Winter couldn't help but wonder if perhaps the director would have done more to help if he hadn't resigned.

  Because Winter was a United States marshal for the next two weeks, he could carry his weapon anywhere inside the United States and its territories and protectorates. What he couldn't do was operate in New Orleans under the color of federal authority. That put him in exactly the same position he had been in a year earlier, except this time his director wasn't even “unofficially” complicit. The one person who had been at his side during that life-or-death battle to save Sean was now lying in the ICU two miles away, and Winter Massey had no problem divining to whom he first owed his loyalty.

  He changed into a button-down blue shirt, black jeans, and cross-trainers. Then, he slipped on his shoulder holster and picked up the lightweight leather jacket. Luckily it was cool enough that wearing it to cover his shoulder rig wouldn't be uncomfortable.

  Nicky was still unpacking in the next bedroom. Winter stood at the door, looking in.

  “You're originally from Mississippi, aren't you?”

  “Originally,” Winter said.

  “What part?”

  “Cleveland. It's in the Delta.”

  “When I think Delta, I picture cotton fields. Old blues singers sitting on rickety porches playing bottleneck to their neighbors and kinfolk, just a hop, skip, and jump from the mighty Mississippi. That the way it is? Sort of like an old movie?”

  “Everybody there sings the blues these days. The plantations are mostly owned by corporations and farmed by machines. I don't get back there often. The rice farms around that area make porch sitting dangerous. Mosquitoes will tear you up,” Winter said.

  “Big, are they?”

  “It isn't necessary that they be big. They fly in clouds.”

  “In Texas, we got clouds of skeeters too. But they're so big they can stand flat-foot and pleasure a turkey while they're draining it.”

  “That so?” Winter said, laughing.

  Nicky took out his toothpick, tossed it aside, and put a fresh one from his pocket into his mouth. “In Texas most everything is bigger. I'm surprised Hank didn't ever explain that to you.”

  “Been my experience that it's just the bullshit is bigger.”

  “That's because the bulls are so damn big.”

  Winter saw Hank's gun on Nicky's bed, so he crossed the room and lifted it.

  “A little worse for wear,” Nicky told him. “I couldn't find the piece missing from the grip. The scratches can be buffed out. Hank had it on him when he got hit. I sort of figured he'd want me to hold it for him.”

  “This gun's got quite a history,” Winter said, setting it back on the bedspread.

  “Well, it might have more before I hand it back to Hank.”

  35

  Faith Ann closed the bathroom door and walked down the dark hall toward the rear of the house. As she approached the den, she saw that the flickering light was from the television set. Faith Ann entered the room and saw that her mother was lying on the sofa. Kimberly was asleep, with her mouth hanging open. Faith Ann knelt and put her hand on her mother's cheek. Kimberly's eyes fluttered and opened and she smiled.

  Faith Ann awoke in the dark and to the reality of her situation. The deaths of her mother, her uncle, and her aunt slammed into her, and panic swept over her like a wave of stove-heated air. She listened intently for whatever had awakened her. She heard the sound of shoe soles on the concrete walkway, then on the steps, and then on the slab over her head. The door to the living room opened with a squeak of hinges and then closed. Faith Ann lay i
n the bunker atop her poncho listening to the sound of someone's shoes on the living room floor.

  They're back.

  She pulled the poncho around her and lay frozen in a fetal curl, safe in the bunker.

  36

  Marta didn't like Tinnerino and Doyle. The two cops were nothing but corrupt brutes with badges. People like them screwed everything up, and their bulldog, bulletproof mentalities made them a distinct liability.

  She decided that she needed to get one more look inside the Porter house, to see if they had missed anything during the initial search. After that, she would ask the detectives if she could sift through what they had collected.

  “Let's go in,” she said.

  “You think she's in there?”

  “We're going to see. I'll come in from the back, you the front.”

  Arturo stretched his arms and climbed from the car.

  Marta eased open the gate and closed it behind them, being careful that the steel lock didn't make any sound. While Arturo went slowly up the steps, she walked the length of the Porter house rapidly but quietly. At the door, she slipped off her boots then used her copy of the key to open the door. When she entered the den, she could see Arturo standing at the far end of the house.

  Sunlight streamed in through the windows. The living and dining rooms, where Arturo had entered, were really one open space with a brick fireplace open around both sides. Then came the kitchen, also open, and past that was the hallway to the bedrooms and the hall bathroom.

  Marta left the den, approached the mother's bedroom door, and eased it open. She scanned the disaster made by the detectives after she and Arturo had left. Hadn't she told them to be careful in their search—not to make a mess—in case the kid returned? Marta figured they'd done it because they resented her telling them how to do their jobs. Too late to worry about that now.

  The master bath was also a wreck, but no sign of the kid. Marta came out and shook her head at Arturo, who had positioned himself in the kitchen.

  Faith Ann's room was in the worst condition of all. The bed was overturned, the contents of the drawers and the closet strewn everywhere. The bastards had even shattered the mirror and broken the framed photographs.

  Marta, who had caught herself feeling jealous of the girl the day before—perhaps because her mother had taken such good care of her—felt a pang of pity for a motherless child who was friendless and frightened as she herself had once been. This changed things. If there was any way possible when the time came, Marta would end the poor child's life with as little physical pain as possible—providing the girl willingly handed over what she had.

  Marta moved down the hall to the other bathroom door and pushed it open. She turned on the overhead light and surveyed it. Her eyes ran over the counter and to the tub and the open closet door. She noticed that the toilet seat was up. That seemed more obscene of the cops than destroying things. This was a house of women. Good women caught up in something they had no way to prepare for. Marta squatted and picked up the hair clippers from the floor. She remembered seeing them during her search of the bathroom. They had been in their box then, which was now empty on the floor. As she studied the instrument, she thought that there was something different about it, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.

  “You should take those. You get tired of preaching to everybody, you can clip rich ladies' froufrou doggies,” Arturo said.

  “Let's go,” Marta told him. “She won't come back.”

  “You think she's been back since we left?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe we should burn this house down,” Arturo said. “If the tape is hidden here, it will be destroyed.”

  “If she has anything, she has it with her. Anyway, the fire department would just put it out and I'm sure someone has seen us. The neighbors must know about the lawyer and her daughter. I doubt Bennett's cops can protect us if there are a lot of questions.”

  “How do you know she was here again?”

  “I know it here.” Marta put her hand low on her stomach where she believed her instincts were centered. That was where she first perceived warnings—where she first knew when something wasn't right. She believed that, in men, instincts were housed in a lower region. Marta remembered vaguely that she had returned to the shack where her mother had been murdered and had hung around there because it was all she knew.

  After they went out the back door, Marta closed and locked it. As they rounded the corner, something caught her eye that she had somehow missed minutes earlier. The bottom of the last of the lattice panels was out of alignment. And in the flower bed, Marta saw impressions—the patterns left by a shoe and a hand—in the damp soil. Leaning down, she could see the sharp tips of the screws sticking through the wood where the panel was hinged to the sill on the inside. The hinges had been attached, for aesthetic reasons, between the panel and the support beam. If the panel hadn't gotten hung up as it closed, it would have been difficult to see that the panel was designed to give people a way to get under the house.

  Marta looked at Arturo, who smiled and nodded to her.

  She handed Arturo her cap before she slipped under the house.

  It was cool under there, and Marta could see all the way to the front; the light coming in through the lattice dimpled hundreds of white diamonds on the soil. She followed the scrapings and shoe prints she knew the child had left. The numerous support columns and the fireplace foundation blocked a complete view, so she crawled toward the front of the narrow house, checking the shadows. She could see Arturo's legs, in diamonds, as he walked slowly along. It was nice having a partner you didn't have to explain everything to—someone who protected your back because he loved you. She never doubted that Arturo loved her as much as she loved him, but the difference was that he depended on her. And she wanted it that way.

  She had just about decided that Faith Ann wasn't there when she spotted a dark square, which turned out to be an opening left when the concrete porch had been poured. With growing excitement, she moved over the soft dirt, her senses focused on the opening of what she knew was Faith Ann's hiding place. She crept up to the opening and saw a yellow poncho that was pulled over something three-dimensional. A sleeping child.

  “Don't be afraid,” Marta said soothingly. She slipped out her folding knife and slid inside the bunker. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  Marta reached over, took a corner of the poncho, and lifted it. Then she cursed softly. Inside there was only a pillow and a flashlight. She turned it on and, looking around, saw the packaging for a Walkman and a plastic container with two of its original four batteries remaining. She lifted the sweat-damp pillow and put the slip case against her cheek, to her nose. The child had been there very recently. Marta couldn't help but smile. The kid was lucky—or something.

  Very soon now. Your luck can't last forever, Faith Ann Porter.

  37

  Faith Ann had felt secure in her hidden concrete annex. While she was in there she could almost convince herself that she was still in touch with her old life. She decided to remain there until the visitors upstairs left, and she would have done just that had an inner voice not ordered her to flee. Her mother had always told her to listen to her feelings.

  So she grabbed her backpack and climbed out of the bunker. She crawled to the rear of the house and pushed out the panel. She remained crouched as she scurried to the back fence. She had to take off her backpack to get under, pulling it after her.

  Four neighborhood boys were playing basketball on the city-owned courts. Two of them glanced at her—but a skinny kid squirming under a hurricane fence was a whole lot less interesting than a Saturday-morning game. She put on her Audubon Zoo cap and lingered there near a group of loitering teenagers so she could watch her house.

  She saw the killer and the shorter woman from the day before as they came out of her back door. Both glanced at the basketball players; Faith Ann dropped her head hastily so the bill of the cap hid her eyes. Second
s later, she looked up and watched the pair turn the corner of her house. She watched in horror as the woman slipped under and the killer began to walk slowly up the side of her house. She knew the woman would find her hideout, and she knew that she was alive only because she had fled when hiding had seemed safer.

  She turned on her heel and strode off down the street toward the tennis club. When she got to the thick privets where she'd hidden her bicycle and helmet, all she found of them was the combination lock, its hasp cut cleanly in half.

  Now she was on foot.

  38

  Winter never judged people by their appearance, and Nicky Green had told him that Detective Manseur, despite his appearance, knew his business.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” Winter said, shaking the policeman's clammy hand when he arrived at the hotel.

  “I'm sorry about your friends,” Manseur said sympathetically.

  “Come and let's us have a sit-down,” Nicky said. “Coffee? Water?”

  “No thank you,” Manseur said as he sat on the front edge of the chair across from Winter like he thought he might have to spring up and run. “I'm a little pressed for time. First off, let me say that I hope whatever I tell you remains between us. I'm sticking my neck way out already, and I like my occupation, which supports my family.”

  Winter nodded, accepting the detective's terms. “Nicky mentioned that you were taken off the Kimberly Porter case.”

  “Yes. In fact I caught the Trammel case later from the man who relieved me of the Porter/Lee homicides. Captain Harvey Suggs.”